


Hi8

by LokisGirl



Category: Metallica
Genre: Gay Chicken, M/M, Masturbation, Video Cameras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 16:09:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30142134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokisGirl/pseuds/LokisGirl
Summary: James and Jason start swapping videos. May or may not be gay chicken, decide for yourself.
Relationships: James Hetfield/Jason Newsted
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15





	Hi8

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be fluff! So not what I planned. There WILL be another version of this that's cutesy... I'm not failing.

Sometimes I wish I was a therapist. Sometimes I wish I could hug those boys and let them cry it all out. I wish I could tell Lars that he isn’t playing second fiddle to James, that his flair for organizing and promoting might be even more important to the band than James’ creativity. I wish I could tell Kirk that he’s had enough cocaine and he was nicer when he was collecting comics instead of baggies. I wish I could tell Jason that the boys love him even though they’re still taking out the loss of Cliff on him. I wish I could make James understand that being rugged and manly won’t make the pain go away.

It's not my place to tell them anything. I’m only the wardrobe mistress. Which in the particular case of Metallica means I’m the laundry lady. Like all twenty-something young men, their wardrobe is jeans and t-shirts. All I have to do keep everything clean, which you would think means they put their dirty clothes in a bag and hand them off to me for washing. 

Boys will be boys, as the saying goes. They never get around to bagging their stuff and then are surprised when they run out of socks. Or they were, before it became an issue. Now I just go and collect whatever I find from the bus and from their hotel rooms. 

I’m often in their private spaces without them. I’m sure they think they do a good job concealing their secrets from each other, and I’d put good money on the idea that it never crosses their minds I might notice things. But notice I do. I notice that when Kirk gets homesick, he wears the purple tank top his mom bought him every day. I notice that Lars wears the exact same pair of jeans each time he has to meet with lawyers of any kind. Those sorts of things are sweet little peccadilloes that warm my heart. 

I get to see the prank wars. I helped sort out the aftermath of the great “Let’s Throw All of Jason’s Things Out An Eighth Floor Window” debacle. Fishing most of his clothes out of a hotel pool is not something I want to repeat. I knew about Kirk replacing Lars’ shoes with bunny slippers before anyone else did. 

So I saw it when the taunting began. The first one I saw was a note taped to Jason’s bathroom mirror at the hotel. 

“Dear Jason, 

It was great meeting you last night. I had such a good time in bed with Jaymz. Wish you were there! 

XOXO,

Michelle”

I had no idea who Michelle was, or why she wanted Jason to know she’d slept with James. It was none of my business, so I stayed out of it.

There were a few more notes in a similar vein. Then the photo showed up. A graphic Polaroid, super close up of a woman being penetrated by a man with very familiar blond hair. It could only be one man in the extended Met family- no one else on the crew or in the band was fair enough. At first, I assumed it must be some sort of inside joke between James and Jason. The pair of them have wicked and twisted senses of humour so it made sense at the time. 

I went to fetch Jason’s things one morning and found his room a total disaster. It looked like the boys had tossed his things again. The mattress was half on the floor, the contents of his suitcase strewn everywhere, including on the ceiling fan. If it was anyone else, I would have pointedly left it for them to clean up themselves but I have a soft spot for Jason. He gets picked on more than his share. The band had a lot on the schedule for today, a bunch of TV interviews to tape and a meet the fans thing before the show so I knew that Jason would be too tired to clean this mess on his own when they got back. I decided to do him a favour and tidy up. 

Gathering up all his things I piled them on the bed before grabbing the suitcase. The lining was torn in one corner, not shocking considering the amount of abuse it took. I pulled it, trying to determine if it needed replacing or if I should call around to see if there was a repair shop that could fix it overnight. The corner came away easily, spilling twenty or thirty Polaroids onto the floor. 

You’re right, I should have minded my own beeswax and put them right back where I found them. What can I say? I’m human, and only three years older than they are. Curiosity got the best of me. 

Mixed as they were, I still got the impression of an evolution in the images. They started from tame pictures of James with pretty women, then ranged the gamut of bad road porn and moved to solo shots featuring our shy blond alone with his hand. The very last one caught my attention because it was the only one with James’ face in the frame, his head tossed in ecstasy. Scrawled across his belly in magic marker, big black letters: JASON. 

It was not Jason’s handwriting. An invitation then? 

So very not my business. 

I can’t say I didn’t wonder. The boys travelled with disreputable amounts of porn in their luggage and on the bus, all of it aggressively heterosexual. Why was James taking these pictures, and why was Jason keeping them?

An argument could be made that throwing them away would be difficult. The band was huge and we’d had incidents of fans hunting through trash for anything that could be considered a souvenir. These photos? A jackpot. Shudder to think…

Maybe it was all a joke. I put them back in the lining, folded the rest of his things neatly and stowed everything in its rightful place. 

James acquired a video camera. He took footage of everything and everyone. He even followed me to the arena laundry room one night and interviewed me about how difficult it was to get skid marks out of Lars’ pants. James is sweet and funny and sometimes annoying as hell. 

The camera floated between the boys as they attempted to one up each other capturing the most embarrassing moments they could. Lars rigged one of those fake chip cans with a fluffy toy snake that shot out when you opened it to explode with flour instead and he and James took extremely funny footage of Kirk getting thoroughly dusted. There was a part two of that video where poor Kirk tried to wash the flour out of his thick curly hair. Adding water essentially turned the flour to wheat paste and in the end he needed Jason to comb it out for him. Jason happily helped him, brandishing the comb and doing an excellent imitation of a Mafia barber with a thick Sicilian accent. That piece made my sides hurt the first time I saw it, I laughed so much.

Finding the camera hooked up to the TV in Jason’s room one morning, I thought I would catch up on whatever shenanigans I might have missed. 

The tape was wound all the way to the end so I hit rewind and let it spool to the beginning. 

I settled on Jason’s bed after pressing play. The first ten seconds or so was a wide shot of a hotel room a lot like this one. Nothing shocking there. The boys are always in hotels. 

James entered the frame, his blond hair shining against his black t-shirt. When he took a slouched seat on the cheap arm chair he’d pulled to the middle of the room, the bottom of the image rode his belt line. 

He glanced off camera at the floor for a few seconds, gave his head a shake, and looked directly into the lens. James has captivating eyes both in person and on film. You can’t help but look into them, which is what I was doing when I realized that his right hand was moving steadily just out of frame. He couldn’t be doing what it looked like he was doing… and yet, here we are, and there’s no other explanation for that particular movement. I watched the muscle of his bicep shift as he touched himself. His pupils dilated as he held his gaze steady on the camera. 

James began to sweat a little; he used his free hand to push that famous mane of hair away from his face and wiped down the long length of his neck. He bit at his lip, his face contorting in a strange combination of intensity and pleasure. A small sound escaped him before his eyes closed in rapture and a visible streak of white flew up onto his shirt. 

I had questions, none of which I was ever going to ask. What was James thinking making this video? 

Why was it in Jason’s room? Was this another prank? 

The screen showed a brief burst of static as if someone had turned the camera on and off suddenly. It cut to a new scene. A different hotel room. A messy bed and an open suitcase on top.

I knew that suitcase. It had a ripped lining and held secrets. 

It belonged to Jason. 

He didn’t bother setting up before turning on the camera. Pacing across the room in front of the bed, he pondered his options. He sat on the side of the bed, got up, dragged a wooden desk chair into the shot, sat on it, scootched around trying to get comfortable, got up again, went around behind the camera for a second, came back, peered at the bed, disappeared to adjust the frame again, returning to land on the chair again, this time with the same amount of himself in view as the image James used. 

My breath caught as Jason pulled his Ramones shirt over his head. Unlike the soft slenderness of the other Metallica members, Jason has a bit of muscle. He’s not ripped but his abs have some definition and his shoulders have some width. 

There’s a little curl of anticipation in my stomach. He’s got to be doing the same thing as James, right? 

I should have turned the tape off. I should have respected his, their, privacy. 

Should’ve. Didn’t. I was dying of curiosity. James has a filthy streak to him. He’s the first one in the band on board for a trip to a strip joint or to take a groupie onto the bus. 

Jason… he’s no saint, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Surely he’s the one in the band that wouldn’t cross the line. 

But he will. He did. Jason went out of his way to put on a bit of a show. He sprawled back in the chair enough that the camera caught the slow slide of his leather belt coming apart, the drag of his zipper opening. He palmed himself in such a way that nothing untoward was seen. 

He stopped, shot that signature mischievous grin at the camera and got out of the chair, a flash of pale skin showing between the halves of his open fly as he passed the camera. 

Back in the chair again, he holds up a small bottle and winks as he pours lube into his palm. It’s obvious he knew exactly where the shot cut off because he slid a bit to get his jeans down to his thighs while changing his position enough that you couldn’t see anything.

So Newsted’s a tease. I would never have guessed. 

Jason tried to do the same thing James had done, maintaining eye contact with the camera. He couldn’t manage it. Where James kept his body static and moved his hand, Jason used his whole body. The point when he switched from trying to turn himself on to full immersion in what he was doing was clear- he started thrusting into his hand, every muscle in his torso contracting. His other hand stroked his pecs, drawing attention to his best features. It crossed my mind that he might have rehearsed. That was such a Jason thing to do. 

James kept himself quiet. Jason was never quiet about anything, and this was no different. Most of the sounds he made were random moans and growls mixed with some typical swearing but he made it sound alluring. I thought about what use I could put his audio track to in my own alone time. 

Right at the end of Jason’s performance, he bowed his back away from the chair enough to raise his hips into the frame long enough for me to catch a glimpse of his fist pumping against his pubic bone before he painted his chest with thick ropes of come. Jason laughed, dirty and delighted as if he’d pulled a successful joke on someone. Returning his gaze to the camera lens, he rubbed his hand through the mess, spreading it over his skin. Raising both his eyebrows in a Why Not gesture, he raised a single finger to his lips and licked it clean.

It was a challenge, and no mistake. 

By this point I was committed. I couldn’t unsee what I saw, and it couldn’t get any worse. Or was that better? I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t like I was spying on my employers. I technically didn’t work for the band, I worked for the tour management company. Metallica was just my assignment. But they were individually people I considered friends.  
Another bit of static heralded the return of James to the screen. He was on the bus this time, the camera held up by his shoulder as he lay in the narrow confines of his curtained off bunk. The light was low, making everything a shadow play. 

However pitiful the lighting, the camera was picking up audio perfectly. I heard Kirk’s distinctive laugh and Jason’s road-hoarse voice telling a non-sequitur spiked story. I could picture the layout of the bus perfectly- there were two bunks along one side across from what passed for a kitchen. Kirk liked to perch on the counter because he could just swing the fridge door open to grab a fresh beer. I’d had many conversations with him standing there beside the bunks myself. It never occurred to me that not three feet away, James might have been… well. I was never going to be able to un-ring that bell. Any time those curtains were closed my mind would jump to this. 

James hadn’t produced a masterwork of low-light photography by any means. It was murky at best, but crisp detail probably wasn’t what he aiming for. The important things were obvious: James’ nudity and his arousal. He zoomed in on his hand loosely holding his ivory erection at the base. His pale skin reflected what little light there was, effectively silhouetting his body. The tension in him was palpable as he tried to pleasure himself with as little movement as possible. It must have been doing the trick for him because it didn’t take very long before James came trembling over his fingers. 

It didn’t seem like a coincidence that James climaxed as I could hear Jason saying “I’ll have to give it to James next time.” His conversation with Kirk was as out of context as possible but somehow I didn’t think that mattered to James. 

Our Jason isn’t one to back down. He responded to James’ bunk by raising him a well-lit shower. 

The next one was the most daring thing yet. A battered couch in a dressing room- Cleveland? I remembered Jason getting drunker than usual on stage that night, James pouring shots down his throat during the bass solo. The crowd loved it. Jason was wobbly for the last half hour of their set. He covered it with headbanging, running around and a lot more tripping than usual. After the show, Jase passed out the instant he got backstage. The crew simply closed the door to the room and left him alone while the rest took care of business. Jason wasn’t doing meet and greet in that state. 

James must have carved himself some time away from the fans as well. Jason was unconscious, draped half on his back half upright on the couch. James sat beside him, naked and hard. 

My heart sank. Jason was out cold. Whatever James did, Jason was in no position to consent. James must have come to the same conclusion. He didn’t touch him at all, maintaining a scant one-inch gap between them while keeping his eyes on Jason the whole time. He’d lean towards Jase and pull away right before making contact with his skin. James licked his lips, took a deep resolute breath and moved to the far end of the couch. I’d never seen anyone wear that look of desire and despair before. It didn’t look like a game anymore. James spread his legs wide, blond hairs on his inner thigh catching the light. Fondling his balls, he stripped his cock harshly, focused only on the man beside him. He dropped his fingers further and when he made contact with his hole he came, Jason’s name spilling out in a breathless gasp. 

The static on the screen reflected the static my brain was reduced to.

“Hello friend.” Jason spoke to the camera, the first time either of them had spoken on the tapes in anything other than subconscious sex rambling. “We’ve been having some fun here, haven’t we?” 

Oh god. That’s Jason’s stage voice. His working the crowd voice. He wasn’t going to babble on or make strange off-topic jokes or skip from subject to subject. He was a man with a mission and that tone tolerated no opposition. 

“But you’re not tired yet, are you?” Is he twisting their stage banter? He is. Underhanded is what that is. I’ll never hear those words from backstage without thinking about this, let alone what it’ll do to James. He knows it’s a trap James can’t get out of. 

“You want some more, don’t you?” Jason flips his mop of curls off his face. The motion draws my eye to the edge of the frame, where I can see the night stand. There’s a copy of Hot Rod magazine sitting there and it dawns on me- Jason doesn’t read car magazines. He doesn’t care about cars that much. Jason’s in James’ room. He’s naked on James’ bed. Where’s James?

True to his nature, Jason’s planned ahead. He brought the lube with him, applying it liberally to his hands, his hard on and the bed spread. I hope James watches the tape before calling down to get a maid in trouble. Jason takes a long moment to spread himself over the bed, long limbs stretched out except for the hand leisurely jerking his cock. He gives the impression of someone who knows exactly how hot he looks. He’s not wrong. This time I’m sure he rehearsed. 

“Yeah, you want more. I do.” Jason gives a sly smile and there’s that ever so expressive eyebrow again. He’s sweating a little, his skin lustrous. He gives a little twist on the end of his stroke and bucks his hips off the bed. “I think you want me to fuck you.”

“Is that what you want, James?”

“Hell yeah it is!” 

There’s two seconds of James launching himself onto Jason, a flurry of hands and hair, before James’ t-shirt flies towards the camera, landing on the lens. 

Guess I’m caught up on the shenanigans.


End file.
